23 - 25 October 2015

This fall, Eastern Bloc will be launching a new project, PirateBlocRadio: In Situ, a series of five radio performances/interventions in public space.

During the 2014 edition of Sight & Sound, artists Alejo Duque and Sylvain Le Beux installed in the Eastern Bloc Lab a mini FM radio, using mainly free hardware and software (Raspberry PI, handmade antennas, etc.). Following a one-day workshop, and for the duration of the festival, the project participants were able to create and deliver content on a local FM band in the immediate vicinity of Eastern Bloc. The project was then broadcasted online on a web radio channel.

This served as an introduction to what Eastern Bloc and the artists represented in its surrounding community then decided to develop: a more elaborate programming of sound and radio experiments in local public space. The expansion of this idea has taken two forms: a regular radio show with CKUT (90.3 FM), PirateBlocRadio, on air the first Thursday of each month, focusing on current issues in digital art and activities at Eastern Bloc; and PirateBlocRadio: In Situ, which will be composed of artistic performances that put forward local artistic practices and radio explorations.

The project's primary goal is to encourage learning and experimenting with new sound practices through the exploration of radio technologies

All performances will thus use the medium of radio, but will not hesitate to divert it, criticize it, and explore its subversive possibilities. The project will examine the conditions and structures of the technology of radio and the usual means of communication, suggesting concrete ways to reverse these structures. It seeks to promote dialogue and criticism within local and international digital arts communities. By "Pirate" we mean diversion, openness, experimentation, and above all, community, which is actually part of a whole artistic tradition carried by many groups and activist communities. It also explores a medium whose practice is inherently ephemeral and immaterial. PirateBlocRadio: In Situ hopes to combine art, technology, urban space and local communities.

The series will run throughout the fall of 2015, with the participation of artists Emilie Mouchous, Nicolas Dion & Anne-Françoise Jacques, Erin Sexton, Thomas Bégin & Sylvain Le Beux, and Stéphanie Castonguay & Sylvain Aubé.

FIRST RADIO INTERVENTION

"Until it is struck", Erin Sexton (VE2SXN), 2015

Installation on view at Eastern Bloc
Live transmission from artist's studio in Bergen, Norway, 1pm each day

Erin Sexton is a Canadian artist who works in sound, performance and installation. She explores the temporality of materials with electronics and crystallization, while trying to make (meta)physical processes manifest within immediate experience. She lives in Montreal and her work has been presented across North America and Europe.